Liquid / Dry Yeast

[GeauxBrew]

Since hurricane Katrina, we don't have a local HBS in the New Orleans area. There is a little shop run our of a house about an hour and a half from me, but they are limited on what they have. Got a kit in from AHS (took 2 days), but when UPS finally got it to my doorstep the "ice pack" and the White Labs Yeast was hot. I've always used liquid yeast, so I am not used to dry yeast. Any advise about brands/ strains/ using starters? Right now I brew extract/ steeping grains but want to AG soon. So any advice on using dry yeast during the hot deep south summer would be great

 

[the_bird]

I've had great success using dry yeast (I use it a lot more than liquid). Don't make a starter. Safale US-05 is a great, clean, high-attenuation yeast (it would be a nice replacement for 1056). Safale S-04 is great, Nottingham is great (also clean, high attenuation). Windsor leaves a little more residual sugars, it's great for porters and the like.

Just rehydrate in a little lukewarm water a little while before pitching, and you're golden. The only issue with dry yeast is that if you want to make a yeast-specific style like a hefe, you're out of luck, and my impression of dry lager yeasts is that they're still not as good as the liquid. But for generic pale ales and IPAs and stouts and porters and all of that - one of those four yeasts ought to get the job done for you.

Plus - THEY'RE CHEAP!

 

[GeauxBrew]

Thanks bird, lately I've been brewing brown ales, been wanting to do a wheat or a fruit beer lately.

 

[the_bird]

I *believe* that there's a new wheat-beer dry yeast, but I've heard nothing about it other that its existance. For browns, Windsor or S-04 would work well. For a fruit beer, probably depends on what the base beer is and how dry you want that to be.

 

[AGBrewer]

I use safale us-05 all the time, awesome yease imho.
Not to hijack but bird why do you say don't make a starter with dry yeast?...Not necessary?

 

[the_bird]

You're pitching a much higher quantity of yeast (counterintuitive as that might seem), and I can't remember the details but I seem to recall there being a technical reason why making a starter was actually a bad idea. I don't know enough of the details about the yeast reproductive cycle to know WHY. Suffice it to say, it's unneccesary (most people including myself get fermentation started within twelve hours with dry), and it MIGHT do more harm that good to make a starter.

 

[Got Trub?]

As the bird stated there are more viable yeast cells in a dry yeast package ~ 180billion in the 11.5gram package. The reason for no starter is the yeast manufacturer grew those yeast under ideal conditions before they were dried, if you make a starter they grow under less then ideal conditions so are not as healthy when you then pitch them. If you figure you need more yeast because you are brewing a big batch or high gravity beer just pitch more packages - after all they are cheap...

For more on yeast pitching calculations see: http://www.mrmalty.com

 

[GeauxBrew]

May seem like a dumb question, and I probably already know the answer, but are there any diffrent techniques as far as reusing/washing/storing after brewing with dry yeast?

 

[GeauxBrew]

Oh and P.S. thanks for the good info guys.

 

[the_bird]

May seem like a dumb question, and I probably already know the answer, but are there any diffrent techniques as far as reusing/washing/storing after brewing with dry yeast?

My technique is to drop $1.50 on a fresh pack!

Dry yeast is too cheap to bother saving, IMO.

 

[Bobby_M]

I wouldn't say there's no benefit to reusing dry. I like the idea of getting a 3 hour or less lag, which is what happens if you reuse half the slurry out of a primary. Of course, the gamble is that if your first batch was contminated, so is the second.

I've always used dry yeast (last 12 batches) but I recently got a free jar full of WPL001 taken out of the local brewpub's fermenter. Wow, 1 hour lag.

 

[Denny's Evil Concoctions]

Windsor has been used for american style hefe's. It will have some banana esters at the higher end of the temp range accoridng to danstar.

safbrew 33 has more esters and is recomended for alts and belginas, though not quite the same as a belgian yeast strain. Safbrew 58 is peppery/spicy. Haven't used that one yet.

Oh yeah. Use a blow off. Dry yeast tend to get started quicker and harder than liquid.

 

[Monk]

I love dry yeasts, all those mentioned before...S-05/04, Nottingham, Windsor. I keep about 5 of them in my fridge all the time. As someone else stated, I think it's cheap enough to just pitch a new pouch and not bother saving it. I actually don't even rehydrate them. I know that's not the normal method, but I just pitch it dry onto the surface of ~78F wort. I then put my carboy in the ferment chamber set to 62F. Within 5 hours the temp is down to 66 and the yeast is already foaming up.

Monk